Gmail Signatures

I posted some time ago about Firefox add-ons. One I mentioned was Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures which allowed you to have different signatures for each Gmail account. Unfortunately it is no longer available on the Mozilla site. There is no mention of it on the Blank Canvas site either.

This is a great loss as it is the only Gmail signature add-on that supported multiple accounts. There are other add-ons for signatures but none of them have this feature. The xpi file can still be found on archive sites, a search should bring up a source for you.

Hopefully one of the other add-ons will add this feature or even better Gmail itself will provide it.

Credit where it is Due

I have criticised Optus in the past when I had problems with my mobile broadband so it is only fair to give credit when they get it right.

As a result of the storms the other night, al least I guess it was the storms could have been a totally unrelated problem, I lost all mobile phone and broadband reception at home. I called them to report it and after describing the situation, my phone could see distant towers weakly for short periods and both being out, they agreed it was most likely a network issue. They said they had several problems in the Sydney area but our local area hadn’t been reported. They would get a tech to investigate but it could take up to 48 hours to resolve. Not something to look forward to.

Anyway less than 10 hours later I had gotten into the habit of checking my phone every so often and there was a full signal this time. I had internet and working well too.

Well done Optus.

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Fedora, Mobile Broadband and Conky

It was over 12 months ago that I blogged about using my Optus mobile broadband with Fedora. I’ve noticed there have been a few searches on that subject recently so I thought it was about time I updated.

With Fedora 11

When I first plugged the 3g modem in it generated a SELinux error and I had to set SELinux to permissive to get it working. That is no longer the case with Fedora 11. Nor does it load the modem as an usb drive. It is recognised as a modem and Network Manager just handles it.

I must add that this seems to apply only to Fedora. I have tried it in Mandriva and Ubuntu derivatives like Gos and only Mint has worked.

This will improve in Fedora 12 with a new feature that will automatically set up the requirements for each provider. Looks like a great feature for those who need to change the default settings.

Working with Conky

Conky is a very useful system monitor. I have often thought of doing a post on Conky but in the interim I’ll just talk about monitoring the Mobile Broadband.

When I first  set up the Mobile Broadband I couldn’t get Conky to report on it. I tried “dmesg | grep usb” and it reported that the modem was using ttyUSB0, ttyUSB1 and ttyUSB2. However none of these would report any activity. Searching around I found that these were redirecting to ppp0. I can’t remember where I found this but it has been consistent across multiple Fedora versions and computers. I can now see the current activity on the Internet connection.

If it is useful here is the code I added to my .conkyrc to get it working

${color0}INTERNET $color(${addr ppp0}) ${color0}${hr 2}$color
${color1}Down:$color  ${downspeed ppp0} KB/s${alignr}${color1}Up:$color ${upspeed ppp0} KB/s
${downspeedgraph ppp0 25,120 color1 color2} ${alignr}${upspeedgraph ppp0 25,120 color1 color2}$color
${color1}Downloaded: $color${totaldown ppp0} $alignr ${color1}Uploaded: $color${totalup ppp0}

Hope that helps.

Security on the Go

An article on Lifehacker Australia today highlights the problem of security when using free wi-fi. I wonder how many people realise that they are putting themselves at risk when they surf the web at fast food and other places. Have a look here for more info.

Another Firefox Gadget

Since I wrote the last post I have added a new gadget that seems pretty useful. It is aimed at Australian Firefox (and other Mozilla browsers) users and others who have download limits on their internet connection. It provides a quick check of the current usage using the data from your ISP. It adds a meter into your toolbar. Hovering the mouse over the meter shows more info.   I found out about on my friend Snowy’s site here. More information and it can be downloaded here.

Firefox Add-ons

I have written before about a couple of the Add-ons I use but I haven’t listed the ones I consider to be essential. So it is time to make that right. I have tried many different Add-ons or extensions as they used to be called but these are the ones I use all the time.

I won’t give links for each Add-on as they can be found by doing a search on the Get Add-ons box in Firefox.

Adblock Plus

This is probably one of the more controversial Add-ons. There are arguments for and against it as advertising is how many sites, particularly the free ones, pay the bills. However as I never click on ads I don’t feel guilty about using it. There is another advantage as in Australia we have download limits, the more we use the more we pay, so I don’t want to use my limit to download someone’s advertising that I won’t even look at.

Having said that it doesn’t block all ads. Those that are coded into the page still appear..

Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures

I’ve written about this recently so won’t add more here accept to say after living with it for a while now I am very happy. It fills a gap in Gmail.

Fast Dial

Obviously inspired by telephone speed dial this is a very handy Add-on. I manage my bookmarks in three layers. The standard bookmark menu is for links I use occasionally. It is sorted into categories to make them easy to find. Next level is Personal Toolbar. Here I keep links I use regularly but not every day. The top level is Fast Dial, it holds sites I access every day like WordPress and a couple of forums.

Fast Dial creates a tab which holds thumbnails of each site. Clicking on it opens the site in a new tab. Incredibly simple and useful. In fact I use Firefox’s ability to have multiple tabs as my homepage. First tab is IGoogle with Gmail, Google Reader and Calender displayed and the second tab is Fast Dial.

No Script

The advent of JavaScript brought a new era of web sites. Now there is hardly a site that doesn’t have some scripting built in. Most menus, buttons and media needs scripts to run. That’s great but what many people don’t realise is the the script is running on our computers. While it is doing useful things it is OK but it can just as easily be used to do damage. For more information on the dangers of scripts have a look at the No Script site.

So what can we do? It is not possible to use the web without scripting but we are at risk with it. A good compromise is to just allow it run on trusted sites. That is what No Script does. When you reach a site you have the option of allowing scripts to run just for this visit on to mark it as a trusted site for all future visits. You may find that many sites are trying to run scripts not just the one you are visiting. This can be one of the dangers although often it is OK.

It is a bit of a pain to set up as you need to approve each site the first time you visit. However once up and running it doesn’t interrupt as often as it did. A recommended Add-on if you are concerned about security.

Xmarks

Formerly known as Foxmarks it was renamed earlier this year when some new features were added. As I use a couple of computers and I like my passwords and bookmarks to be consistent across both of them I find this essential. But it also useful as a way to back up your browser data.

I used to use Google’s Browser Sync but when it was discontinued I needed to find a replacement. Foxmarks, as it was then, had just added passwords to its system and so I tried it out. It seems to work just as well as Browser Sync and has some additional features such as tagging bookmarks.

A Word of Caution

Add-ons are a great feature of Firefox and are one of the reasons to use it over other browsers however there are some things to bear in mind. Add-ons are created by the community and so the quality can be variable. The ones I have listed are popular and seem quite stable but that can’t be said for all. Also it is not advisable to use too many Add-ons. More than 10 or so will cause Firefox to slow down.

If you are having problems with Firefox try disabling all Add-ons and then re-enable one at a time. You will probably find one of the Add-ons are responsible.

Summary

So that’s it. Five Add-ons I find useful. These are the ones that have stayed part of my system when many others have come and gone. Which Add-ons would you recommend?

Gmail Signatures

I have been using Gmail for a long time. You needed an invitation when it first became my default mail client. Not that that is anything unusual, I mention just so you know I am generally happy with it. It serves my purposes. I look forward to new features and try anything that interests me. I have Labs enabled so I can play with the things there.

However there is one feature I really wanted and it isn’t part of Gmail or even in Labs. That is different signatures for each account. Gmail is great in the way you can use several different accounts in the same screen just like a stand alone email package. I have my regular Gmail account plus my default account from the ISP (just for messages they send) and also an account for a local group I am the secretary of.

Gmail lets you set up a signature but it is used on every email. Not what I want. I have waited hoping this would change but no luck. So I decided to do some searching and found this great Firefox Add-On, as they call them now, “Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures”. Not only does it do what I wanted, different signatures for each account but you can have up to 4 signatures for each account and select the one to use when you create a message if you don’t want to use the default. One for family and one for friends for example.

It is a little unusual in that the options are set within the Gmail Create Message screen and not in the Add-Ons dialog but that makes sense when you think about it. There is a beta version but I am using the last stable version. It is working well for me.

Wireless Broadband Update

After my last post I lodged a formal complaint via email with Optus. They are supposed to answer within so many hour, 72 I think, but they haven’t. However I must say there has been quite an improvement. I rarely get a drop out at the moment and the speed is much better. I can watch You Tube again! (As an aside isn’t HD on You Tube a great improvement?).
I’m still a little peeved that I haven’t received a formal reply but as long as the system is working I can’t be too upset.

Wireless Broadband Failure

I posted sometime ago about setting up my 3G modem in Fedora. I have a Hauwei E169 modem which I got from Optus. I had no problem setting it up and getting online, it just worked.

Unfortunately the same can’t be said for the Optus 3G network. I had heard reports of it being overloaded and it seems that is the case. To be fair when it works it work well but that is less than 50% of the time. It is not unusual to have it drop out and then need to reconnect several times while checking mail or the Fedora forums. It wasn’t always like this though, when I first got it it was great.

Thinking it may be a Fedora / Linux problem I plugged it in to a XP box today to give it a run. I hadn’t used that computer for a while and so decided to install Firefox 3. The download took quite a few minutes, 15 at least. I watched the speed in the Optus software and it rarely got up to 50 Kb/s often under 20. It also sat at zero for some time on several occasions although the Optus software didn’t show it as having no signal. It did finally drop out while I was trying to update the extensions I had installed. I couldn’t get it to reconnect.

When I contacted support they were helpful but wanted to treat it like a setup problem and were unwilling to admit the problems is with their system.

My conclusions are it runs faster under Fedora when it runs. The service is probably overloaded and getting worse. Linux’s NetworkManager is more likely to show it as having no signal. My advice to anyone thinking of getting Optus 3G is don’t bother.

Browser Sync

I wrote sometime ago that Google’s Browser Sync was going to close at the end of 2008 (actually 6th January 2009). It will be missed by those of us who used it. No use crying over it now but what will replace it for you?

After a bit of research I found Foxmarks. Originally it only synced bookmarks but the latest version, only for Firefox 3 not 2, also syncs passwords. This makes it a valid replacement for Browser Sync.

In fact it has a few features that make it better. One is the online review of your bookmarks. It shows you a history of when you last updated a bookmark and the last time you visited the site. Useful when you want to clean up your bookmarks.

So if you left finding a replacement for Browser Sync until the last minute have a look at Foxmarks.